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London history and mystery revealed!

Month: May 2015

In a seventy year old guide to Soho in my collection, there’s a great chapter entitled: Wide Boys, Spivs, Dippers and Steamers. It details the murky criminal underbelly of London’s entertainment district. Because mid-twentieth century Soho was a dangerous place. But also exciting. As the book puts it: One has only to take a short walk from […]

Chas Baker was a very prominent high street mens outfitter in the late nineteenth century. Here you can see one of their stores in Fleet Street and a couple of adverts from a London map and guide the company sponsored.

Dick Hughes is mentioned in the Newgate Calendar as a robber who came to London at the start of the eighteenth century to make money the dishonest way. He’d already been arrested and tried in Worcester for theft. On that occasion he’d been whipped at the cart’s tail “crying carrots and turnips” as he was […]

To look at London Bridge now you see….well…..a bridge with traffic on it. But go back three centuries or more and the bridge was full of houses and some illustrious tenants. During the reign of Henry VIII, the court painter Holbein lived there. Two hundred years later, another artist – Hogarth – was a resident. […]

During the Second World War, London’s suburbs took a pounding as well as the inner city districts. This postman in South Woodford, on the London/Essex borders, arrives with a letter only to find the house concerned has been pounded to rubble by the Luftwaffe.

Samuel Pepys kept his famous diary of London life during the year 1665 when plague ravaged the city – killing thousands. He first noticed the onset of the pestilence when red crosses appeared on a door in Drury Lane. In a matter of a few days, King Death had galloped through the City of London […]

Old soldiers didn’t die in Georgian London – they became Charlies. These were watchmen who were supposed to protect Londoners against criminals on the dangerous streets. Only they weren’t very effective. This was before the modern police force was formed by Sir Robert Peel and Charlies gave way to Bobbies. The Charlie was more often […]